Financially beleaguered Burlington College has to raise a quarter of a million dollars this academic year just to meet its operating expenses, interim president Michael Smith said Wednesday. He's hoping requisite donations will come from people in and around Burlington who recognize the college's value and want to see it survive.

How long the college can survive remains an open question, and the answer depends partly on how much success Smith has in charting a course to financial sustainability. He agreed to assume the college's top position through the end of the year, following the surprise resignation of Christine Plunkett on Sept. 2. Then he looked at the numbers and concluded that the college has to come up with at least $250,000 by June 30.

He hopes that he — and the members of the board of trustees who hired him — will be able to find people willing to write big checks to help keep the college afloat. And he expects they'll do so if they believe — as he does — that Burlington College is worth saving.

His take, so far, is zero, but he's barely three weeks in the job and just getting started.

Smith's comments came from a meeting Wednesday with a reporter and members of the Burlington Free Press editorial board. He was accompanied by Coralee Holm, the college spokeswoman.

Increasing enrollment is another key to financial stability, he said. Current full-time equivalent enrollment is 174 undergraduates and 14 graduate students, he said. He'd like to see that grow 30-40 students by next fall through a "professionalized" admissions department, including a director and two recruiters.

Smith has brought in a financial manager to help an understaffed chief financial officer, he said, and he has made some cuts — but not in personnel. Early on, he informed staff and faculty that the college would be suspending its contributions to the retirement plan through June 30 and reducing its share of health-insurance payments from 80 percent to 70 percent.

These measures reflect the college's money woes, which came into public view over the summer when the regional accrediting agency put the college on two years' probation because it fell short of financial standards. The New England Association of Schools and Colleges gave Burlington College notice that it could lose accreditation if its budget picture didn't improve.

Contributing to the college's financial stress was a debt of about $10.5 million that resulted from the 2010 purchase of 32 acres from the Burlington Catholic Diocese. The property became the college's new campus, but it came with a 77,000-square-foot building that the college could not afford to fully restore and that remains half occupied. An audit for Fiscal Year 2013 concluded with a "going concern" that the college's net assets had diminished by $758,769 and that college had failed to meet its debt service coverage ratio.

The college also went through a leadership crisis. The faculty/staff council and the student union both issued "no-confidence" statements on Plunkett, who wound up announcing her resignation during a confrontation with students that followed a board meeting Aug. 29. Over the following weekend, the board of trustees recruited an interim leadership team: Smith, a former deputy state treasurer and former state president of Fair Point; Jane Knodell, a University of Vermont economics professor and former provost, a part-time adviser on academic matters; and David Coates, a CPA, as a part-time financial adviser.

Smith said he's putting in full days that often begin when he starts sending out emails at 4:30 a.m. He took the job, he said, because Burlington College appeals to him as an innovative school that has long embraced nontraditional students and veterans.

He said the college has to get past the point of operating in crisis mode.

"You have to find a way to give the organization some breathing room," he said.

Under Plunkett, the college developed a master plan that called for developing half the property for housing, a means of retiring half the college's debt. No agreement has been signed with the designated developer. Smith said he's concerned that the plan would not bring the college any income until 2016, and that he'd like to find a way to bring in some money sooner.

The college has to be upfront about its finances, he said.

"On a cash basis, when I add up all the expected revenue, all the expected expenses, I need $250,000 in order to balance the budget on June 30," he said. The budget amounts to about $5 million. Roughly 80 percent of those operating expenses will go to employee compensation.

Ideally, he said, the college will raise more than that.

"To attract a new president, to attract staff, you've got to have stability in this organization," he said.

"To me, personally, this is an institution worth saving," he said. "But it isn't going to be me, or David Coates or Jane Knodell that's saves this institution. It's going to have to be the community. It's going to be the community stepping forward and writing checks for a thousand or ten thousand or a hundred thousand or a million dollars. That's basically what's going to have to happen."

Why should the community step forward?

"There's a vibrancy in the North End, especially in the Old North End," he said. "I can feel it in the short time I've been there. Burlington College is central to that vibrancy. I think it's important for Burlington, it's important for the region that institution stay there."

Burlington College is also important for Vermont, he said, because it's a draw for young people who might not otherwise go to college in a state that's hemorrhaging youth. Most of the college's students come from out of state.

Unlike many colleges, this one doesn't have a large alumni base to draw on for fundraising purposes. That's why Smith pins his hopes on the Burlington area.

"Look, I can tell the story, but I can't write the check," he said. "And if the check isn't written, then we have to really look at our future."